How can you copyright and publish art and writting if your underage?

Question:

How can you copyright and publish art and writting if your underage?

i want to do this to add it contests to help with collage. i inteend on goin to an art school and figured this would help with scholarships and such. but i am 15 and i cant find any information on how to copy right, publish, an add to contests. if you have any information please share.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

The "mailing your work to yourself" method of copyright protection isn't reliable in the United States (see http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp... for more information).

Fortunately, any work you create is automatically copyrighted once it's transfered to a physical medium (in other words, a poem is copyrighted immediately upon writing it on paper, but you can't copyright an idea). Unfortunately, you will have to register your copyright in order to claim damages for infringement (still, even without registration, you automatically retain the rights to reproduce your work).

As far as contests are concerned, I don't know any for poetry off the top of my head, but I CAN advise you to stay far away from poetry.com; it's a horrible scam that feeds off artists hoping to find themselves published. In fact, just to be safe, you should use any such website with a bit of caution and do a little research before submitting any content there, especially if they ask for money or ask you to buy anything.